being a moving target
by irnan
Summary: glimpses of the watch!verse - ie, a happyending!AU.
1. tyrion, 6 aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_._ (Title of this collection from McMaster Bujold_.)

**tyrion – (6 aRW)**

If you'd told him seven years ago that he'd ever dance at a feast to celebrate the rebuilding of Winterfell, he'd have laughed in your face and reached for a drink.

Well, the drink part hasn't changed.

The music rises to a crescendo with a scrape of fiddles and a shout of laughter. Robb is spinning his wife across the floor with his broad hand across her lower back and her hair coming loose as she laughs up at him; scarce three weeks out of childbed and Jeyne Stark is unstoppable.

_Well, the girl gave birth the first time on some innkeeper's hearthrug; that'll harden anyone. If it doesn't kill them_.

It's all far too reminiscent of the first time he was feasted here by another Lord Stark, with a different Queen as guest of honour. Daenerys is flushed with wine and friendship and safety. Selmy stands behind her chair listening to her conversation with Arya Stark with a faint, contented smile.

Tyrion gives himself a shake. Of all the things he could be doing right now, observing his fellow revellers is surely the least interesting of all of them. There was a serving maid earlier who smiled at him inviti-

Ah.

She's pouring wine for his lady wife.

Some fool demon squatting in his head prompts him to wander over to her, stepping over dogs and dropped tankards and the legs of Quentyn Martell, stretched out in front of him while he frowns up at the ceiling – Aegon was right, the boy can't hold his liquor – and wolf pups both two-legged and four. Kitten is contemplating the dregs of a glass of wine thoughtfully.

"Don't," Tyrion stops to tell her. "Once you've started, you'll never stop."

She looks up at him with eyes the same colour as her namesake's – as her aunt's – and smirks.

"Is that so?"

He shakes his head at her and carries on. Girl can't resist a challenge. _Having the wolf blood_, he's heard Arya call it.

He puts his tankard down on the table by his wife's elbow and climbs up on the bench beside her. That black wolf of hers is lying on her other side with its head in her lap.

"My lord of Lannister," says Sansa courteously.

"My lady wife," he says expansively, and wishes she could at least have the decency to flinch at the words.

She doesn't.

"Don't you think we ought to be moving beyond those sorts of formalities by now?"

Faintest upward turn of that perfect mouth.

"Courtesy is a lady's armour, they say."

"I remember _you_ saying it, yes."

Sansa looks surprised. Faintly, again. She's good at _faintly_. Where her expression was once vacant, now it's controlled: not quite stoic, but still guarded.

"Do you remember so many of our conversations, my lord?"

In spite of himself, Tyrion says, "Yes."

She glances down at the wolf in her lap, long fingers curling briefly in fur. She wears white, this wife of his, white and grey and little else unless it's pale blue, but the sapphire teardrop around her neck is set in gold, not silver.

He remembers it was a gift from Prince Aegon, for no occasion that Tyrion can recall except that he saw it and liked it and thought it suited her.

"What now?" he asks.

Sansa purses her lips. "I think I shall bully one of my brothers into dancing with me one more time, and then I'll retire."

That wasn't what he meant. He's not sure what he _did_ mean. Her hair is pinned up only haphazardly, a careless informality he does not recall ever seeing in her at King's Landing. One long curl of it falls down behind her left ear and brushes at her smooth neck and the collar of her dress.

(He wants to reach out and twist it round his finger and pin it back in its place.)

When she looks at him, Tyrion could almost believe she's seeing into his very soul. _The Queen of Winter, they call her, with eyes of ice and a smile like summer..._

How many men have asked for her hand? He knows Robb's refused to make Arya marry, wrecking one attempt of dear Uncle Kevan's to return the North to the rule of the Iron Throne partly by proposing a marriage between Arya and the Tyrell heir. Rumour was Robb laughed in his face. _What you prevented Lady Olenna from doing with one sister, you'll happily arrange for the other?_ he was said to have scoffed.

At least Kevan wasn't fool enough to have proposed a marriage with one of Aunt Genna's boys.

"Tyrion," she says and sighs. "I never could understand what it was you wanted from me."

_A marriage_.

"Neither could I," he says robustly. "What did _you_ want of _me_, my lady?"

Sansa looks away, the torchlight sliding over her shoulders and playing in her hair. She's watching Jeyne fall into a seat by Dany and Arya, Robb gathering up the girls and shooing them towards the door, Rickon deep in conversation with Larence Hornwood and the young Glover lad, Bran's fingers trailing over the soot-stained walls as he follows his nieces, stops for a word with Robb.

"I wanted you to send me home," she says distantly.

_I wanted you to not be a Lannister. I wanted you to not murder my parents. I wanted you to be tall and brave and handsome. I wanted you to be chivalrous and sweet and loving, not abrasively kind. Not just decent. I wanted you to be more. To be better. To be my dream, my knight, my champion._

Tyrion licks his lips.

"I'm sorry," he says bitterly.

_Too much to ask to bend her stiff Stark knees. Then as now_.

She looks at him silently. Nothing there: no sympathy, no apology, no regret. He knows now why they say she has eyes of ice.

He's almost opened his mouth to make an even bigger drunken fool of himself when the wolf looks up and a shadow falls over them: Jon Snow, holding out that burned right hand of his to his foster-sister/cousin.

"Dance with me, Sansa," he says, laughing. "Dany doesn't know the springreel and I promised I'd show her."

Sansa pushes her pup off her lap gently and jumps up with a swish of white skirts. "And you'd find yourself in a hopeless tangle if I weren't there to hold your hand!"

"Indeed I would," says Snow, still laughing. "Sansa taught me to dance, you see," he says to Tyrion. "In the godswood, when we were children."

The plain implication is that Lady Stark never let him take lessons with his supposed siblings, but both Sansa and Snow are smiling with the memory, as if it was one of the few times they were close as children.

"I'm sure she was an excellent teacher," says Tyrion, but they've already gone, whirling off into the smoke. Ghost picks Memory up by the scruff of her neck and carries her over to the fire where Arya's wolf – Nymeria? – lies asleep.

Tyrion empties his tankard and goes in search of another.


	2. the witch of winterfell,  99 months aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_._ (Title of this collection from McMaster Bujold_.)

**the witch of winterfell – (99 months aRW)**

She got used to the cold eventually.

It sank into her bones and bred there, radiating outward once more to freeze her blood all over again. She adjusted her perceptions to accommodate it and controlled herself the way she had been taught. It was not just her face that was her tool, but her whole body, every muscle, every sinew, every square inch of skin. She twisted her tools around the ice in her veins and accepted it as part of her and when she wakes it will be part of her and there to stay.

But for now she eyes it, slightly distrustful, and then flees to her sister to prowl the woods and run the hills under a hunter's moon. She lifts her voice in song the way she did in the warmlands and her pack answers her: not as big as it was, perhaps, but closer, stronger. Sun-brother summer-brother pale-brother black-brother. Her children she could not find, but that was right, for they did not hunt yet. They guarded, and waited their time.

They spread out, slinking through the snow on noiseless feet, and surrounded the Place she lies in, helpless and yet not, for she is wrapping the cold into her bones, making it her own, and They will not defeat her.

* * *

><p>Something is rasping, rough and wet, across her face. Double-vision of a human face and a wolf-one; the girl in the bed has grey eyes and a face full of edges, lovely but cold.<p>

The girl in the bed has a name; she struggles back to it, wolf-tongue licking her face and smoothing all the layers of falsehood away until there is naught left here but _Arya_.

Her sun-brother puts his hand behind her head and lifts it gently.

"Here. Drink."

Arya slurps the water greedily and finds his name stamped on his battered face, in blue eyes that have seen too much death and let go of too many beliefs.

Robb.

"Bran?" she croaks.

"In the next room. Sam is with him."

"Jon? The pup?"

"Safe. Jon wasn't hurt. The pup's still at the Shadow Tower with the Mormont girl. Aegon held the Wall while we were gone."

"Were you?"

Puzzlement.

"Hurt," she qualifies.

"Oh. No. Well, only cracked ribs."

She snorts, smiles, lets her eyes close. "Knew you'd come for us," she says.

Whiskered kiss to her forehead. "Always."

* * *

><p>When Arya wakes again the dragon-queen sits by her bedside. It takes far longer to find her name than it did her pack-mates'.<p>

"Daenerys," says the dragon-queen. "Jojen said you'd been running with Nymeria for so long, it might take you a while to remember."

Ah, Jojen. Understands her too bloody well.

"Dany," says Arya, stupidly proud she could summon the nickname. "Everyone –"

"Is perfectly well."

"Thank you."

"Thank _you_, Lady Arya. You saved my life, and I've not had the chance to say it yet."

That was true. She remembers Needle in her hand, the pop of the wight's eyes being stabbed out, the way it stumbled and flailed. She remembers Dany being dragged away by her bloodriders, and the battle raging on.

She will not remember where she found herself when it ended.

"I wanted to give you these," says Dany quietly. "As a thanks."

Arya pushes herself upright and takes the gift. It's two knives, grey-scabbarded, beautiful, with wolfshead pommels like Jon's Longclaw, and the one they put on Oathkeeper after Robb had the smiths remove Lannister's rubies from the hilt. Brienne gave it back into his keeping that first day at Greywater Watch, and to honour her service to Rickon and Sansa and their lady mother he never changed its name.

The knives are thin-bladed, near as long as Needle itself, and wrought of dragonsteel.

She looks up at Dany.

"You know I found the secret of it in Valyria," she says, smiling faintly. "And Needle is of little use against – our Enemy."

It's sadly true. Bran's knives are dragonglass but Arya has never seen him use them against any living creature. Arya grips the hilts and feels them fit perfectly into her hands and smiles.

"These," she says, "are gorgeous, Dany."

Dany touches her knee and grins back.


	3. aegon, 100 months aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_._ (Title of this collection from McMaster Bujold_.)

**aegon – (100 months aRW).**

They elect him Lord Commander over his protests and against his better wishes.

"We chucked the sellsword business around the time Griff packed us up and chivvied us to Meereen to get you your birthright," Marsen tells him. "And I an't the only one to say so. We were exiles, Aegon. You've brought us home. What contracts do you think we're about to accept other than this?"

Aegon curses at them and threatens retribution and offers coffers full of gold if they'll just burden Aurane with it and not him, but they laugh at him and make him swear the oaths just the same.

He trudges back to Winterfell alternating between cursing at Griff's body and crying over him, but of course it does no good. They build him a pyre by the godswood and watch as he burns: this, the only father Aegon has ever had, or ever wanted. What does he know of Rhaegar Targaryen? Naught but that the man loved two women and died for one, bringing ruination upon the Kingdoms as he did so.

Morbidly, Aegon wonders if the Usurper buried him, or if his royal sire's corpse was stripped and dumped in the river and left to rot there like any other soldier. He doesn't think Ned Stark would have allowed it, but it was Arryn who truly had Baratheon's ear.

Sansa stands by him, arm through his. She's spent most of the day closeted with Arya and Bran, who are safely tucked in their sickbeds as Aegon watches his father burn. In the firelight she is golden-red all over, from her hair to her skin to the white dress she wears that soaks up the light and keeps it trapped, to cling to her curves and swish as she moves. She's all grace and beauty tonight, though her eyes are bruised with grief and fear for her siblings and Mem stalks around them restless as a cat.

Too young to be a widow. Far too young to have been a wife in the first place. When Tyrion died Dany told him of Robb's demand that he take the black and leave Sansa unequivocally free. Viciously, Aegon wishes Dany had had the heart to tell him while he lived that she had agreed.

He's a dog in a manger, and a particularly ill-tempered one besides. If he cannot be happy – if nothing in his life can be simple for once – if his bloody father is going to die and leave him to sort out the mess he made in the assumption that Aegon has the slightest clue what he's doing – then everyone else should be suffering the same.

A log collapses, and sparks fly up, dancing gold against the black night sky. He went to Meereen at Griff's behest, and he stayed because he loved Dany like a sister within hours of meeting her.

And because Griff had disowned him and she was all he had.

_You are not my son, Aegon. I did not name you for Rhaegar's child. You are Rhaegar's child_. _You are not my son. Nor were you ever Ashara's, though it was she who smuggled you out of the Red Keep and west to Starfall_.

"Sansa," he says softly.

She looks up at him and laces her fingers through his.

_Oh my wolf-queen; my rose-in-winter_.

"I wronged you, did I not?" she says softly. "Back in the Vale."

_I'll not marry you, Prince Aegon. I'll not marry anyone! I've no wish to be so helpless and so used again_.

"No," he says. "It was my haste and my arrogance."

He never wanted to be a Prince of anywhere, but dear gods has he wanted her.

Sansa smiles. "I've thought myself in love before," she says. "Inevitably, that was the worst part."

Aegon raises her hand to his lips and kisses it. She tugs their joined hands down, draws him after her away from the ashes of his old life and the burning effigy of Aegon Connington, of Ashara Dayne's son, of Young Griff. She leads him across the courtyards and into the keep where the hot water rushes through the walls like the lifeblood of a living – direwolf. Poised to spring, to pounce, to run and hunt and tear down its prey, biding its time here in the centre of the North by the side of the kingsroad.

She leads him up the stairs and along the corridors, and he gently shuts the door to her chambers behind them both.


	4. arya, 27 months aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_._ (Title of this collection from McMaster Bujold_.)

**arya – (27 months aRW)**

They didn't quite mean to be left alone together. Rickon is asleep with Shaggydog in his bed. Robb and Jeyne have not yet come down. Osha and Brienne are talking in the practice yard

And so here they are.

Arya pokes at breakfast absently. Sansa is watching her across the table, not even bothering to pretend to eat. Her hair's got brown streaks in it and she's a lot taller than Arya remembers.

"I'm glad you found Nymeria," she says.

Arya looks up. "So am I," she says awkwardly, because apparently she's forgotten how to say 'thank you'.

But Sansa nods. Arya wonders if Robb has said something to her. _Be careful with Arya. She's fragile. Arya is a very delicate lie, a sheet of ice that may crack at any moment_.

He used to hold her and hold her in the hayloft at the farm, awake all night and gripping her tightly to him. _Arya Stark you're Arya Stark you're my sister you're Eddard and Catelyn's daughter you're a Stark of Winterfell a daughter of the North and winter is coming you're Arya Stark_.

"Where did you go?" Sansa asks gently.

Arya frowns. "North. Or I tried. The Hound wanted to ransom me to Mother but."

She cannot say it. _I was there. I didn't stop it_.

"Baelish wanted me to marry Harry Hardyng. In the Vale."

Arya wrinkles her nose. "Who's he?"

Sansa grins. "Stupid."

Giggle, like a silly little girl. They eat for a moment in silence, feeling fond and cheerful. Sansa chews a piece of cheese and plays with the knife thoughtfully, twisting it to catch the light. She's not holding it very well.

Arya swallows a mouthful of porridge. "I could show you how to throw that," she blurts.

Sansa looks up.

(And here comes the lecture about being ladylike.)

"Could you?"

Wary, Arya nods. "Yes."

"Hmm. They say poison is a woman's weapon, you know."

"A weapon is a weapon," says Arya.

Silence. Sansa cuts herself a sliver of cheese and purses her lips. "I think I'd like that."

For a second, Arya's not sure what she's talking about. "Knife-throwing?"

"Yes."

She jumps up, suddenly elated – suddenly delighted. Sansa, agreeing to do something unladylike! Maybe she'll let Lady Jyana put her in a dress as a thank you.

"Let's go then!"

"Now?" Sansa protests, but she's laughing. "You haven't finished breakfast."

"Hmmf," says Arya, but several months of being around Jeyne have her dropping into her chair and finishing her porridge just the same.

They sneak a set of throwing knives off the weapons master and find a clearing and a tree to use as a target. Arya is used to having her dancing lessons in private and Sansa doesn't seem to mind. It takes ages of course – she can't throw at _all_, Sansa. Got no aim. But they practice and they practice and pause for a rest and practice more and laugh rather a lot. It reminds Arya vaguely of when they were very little, before dresses and embroidery mattered at _all_.

Robb brings them lunch himself. Grey Wind pads around the small clearing and sniffs at them both – _are you all right good try not to wander off again_ – before settling down at Nymeria's side.

"Everyone all right?" asks Arya.

"Fine," says Robb. "Jeyne is talking mother-things with Lady Jyana. I beat a retreat after the first ten minutes. Something about cabbage. And the pup is devouring a midday meal that the Greatjon probably couldn't keep up with."

Sansa laughs. "And here's the King in the North, waiting on his sisters hand and foot."

"Hmm," says Robb and kisses her cheek. "It's no chore."

Sansa looks amazed. She's completely forgotten how to have a big brother. Arya can tell. She remembers feeling that look on her own face. Robb grins at them and stays long enough to give them tips about throwing arms and stances that Arya doesn't really need, but it's _Robb_ and he's here to do it, so she'll listen to him lecture on whatever he likes, and then he wanders off again. Grey Wind noses at their hands in farewell. _Be safe don't take long_.

Later on, when it's Arya's turn to gather up the knives, she says, "What you said earlier. About poison being a woman's weapon."

"Yes," says Sansa. "Of course, its effectiveness greatly depends on how quickly you can get your hands on it."

Arya pauses. "Was – was that a problem in the Vale?"

Sansa's not looking at her. "Very nearly."

Impulsively, she says, "I promise not to tell."

"You never told. I did that."

"You were perfect." Perhaps it's _slightly_ resentful.

"But Father loved you more."

"No, he didn't! Deep down he wanted me to be just like you _really_."

Sansa picks a knife up and tosses it from hand to hand, eyes narrowed a little. She doesn't fumble a catch, and she doesn't look up, and Arya thinks that she was probably wrong when she used to think Sansa was stupid. Just because you don't bother to look with your eyes doesn't mean you don't have them.

And sooner or later, everyone wakes up.

"I think," says her sister, "that maybe... maybe there were some things Father wasn't very clever about at all."


	5. jeyne, 30 months aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_._ (Title of this collection from McMaster Bujold_.)

**jeyne - (30 months aRW)**

She finds him in the godswood, cleaning his sword.

It makes her think of Riverrun and Rickard Karstark. It makes her think of Lady Catelyn.

"Jeyne. All's well?"

"Yes, love. Are you?"

Robb sighs. "I think I see a way to solve a _few_ of our problems."

She does not remember this wry, dark twist to his humour from – from Before. But Arya shares it with him and Jeyne thinks they must have discovered it together, those long months in the riverlands.

She seats herself at his feet before the heart tree and leans her shoulder against his knee, grey and purple skirts trailing. Her dresses these days are... rudimentary, and of heavier material than she's used to. She must remember to pack leggings for the trip to Castle Black.

"But?" she prompts him gently.

He flexes his hand around the hilt of his sword. "It's crossing a line. At least, I'm afraid it would be crossing a line. My lord father would not have considered it, I think."

"You are not your father, Robb."

"I appreciate the reminder!"

"Don't! Listen to me. Would Lord Eddard rather see you protect your honour or your family? They say he confessed to treason before they murdered him. What was that if not an attempt to shield Sansa from Lannister retribution?"

Robb makes an impatient movement; sheathes his sword and puts it aside. Jeyne does not turn, but she thinks he has sunk his head on his hands.

"All my life he's taught me one thing, and then he goes and acts another," he says bitterly. "Then he goes and dies while I'm still fool enough to think blood on my hands and a few battles at my back make me wise enough to rule."

She sits silent. He touches her hair.

"I love you," he says. "I'll never regret it. But I'm a fool indeed to throw my life away for honour, and then be given a second chance and throw my honour away for my life."

A cold chill is moving down her spine.

"Robb," she says softly. "Oh, Robb, what are you planning?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him clench his fist. "Vengeance," he says. "One way or another. By my own hand, if I can. If not... there are still ways. I plan to make them fear me, Jeyne. I plan to make them fear all of us. The North is _ours_, and Bolton, Frey and Greyjoy will all know it ere the end."

"You're frightening me," she says.

He barks a laugh. "I frighten myself. But there. You don't hold a place like this for eight thousand years as kings and lords and kings again without a certain willingness to go an extra mile when someone crosses you. There was one other title they gave me at Riverrun. _The King of Winter_."

Finally, finally, she looks up at him. He cut his hair, close-cropped as his beard now, and there is threads of grey in that at his jaw, where underneath there is a line of scar tissue. Kitten has his eyes: river-blue, she thought at first, and no doubt Lady Catelyn did as well.

But that's not true at all.

"This is wolf-country up here," he says. "It has been so for eight thousand years. It will be so again. And winter is coming."


	6. the queen of winter, 12 aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_._ (Title of this collection from McMaster Bujold_.)

**the queen of winter – (12 aRW)**

The second time her husband and her brother crawl out of the hearth in Daemon's nursery, Sansa cannot even summon much surprise.

"Again?" she asks drily, shifting Day in her arms. He flexes his fingers against her breast and his eyes flutter as he sucks. It's frankly an effort to look away from him to his father and uncle.

"It's a way to pass the time," says Jon, scratching Memory's ears and turning his back politely. Aegon climbs out after him with a twist and a muffled curse and comes to kiss her and Day.

"How was council?" he teases.

"Much less entertaining without you both," says Sansa, turning her face up for a second kiss. "How much longer do you plan on doing this?"

"Until we've got a map of the _entire tunnel system_," says Jon.

Aegon and Sansa exchange a long look.

"He's bored," she says.

"It's all the _highness-es_," says Aegon. "They grate on his nerves."

"Poor boy," says Sansa, straight-faced.

"I'm still in the room, you know," says Jon.

She knows the way his mouth must be twitching; five-and-twenty years of teasing and laughs and dancing lessons in the godswood have taught her. She knows the way his right hand is flexing, too; twelve years of winter, of battle and fear, have taught her.

"Nothing is crawling through those walls, Jon," she says.

Aegon strips his filthy tunic off and goes to wash his hands and arms in the basin of water by the window before he squats by her chair with his hand on her knee – scratched and damp, it leaves a water-smudge on her white dress. His fingers are warm through the thin silk, indigo dragon-eyes fixed on their son.

"I know," says Jon quietly.

Naturally it will not stop him worrying. Probably nothing ever will.

"Anyway, half the tunnels we can find are too small for either of us to explore," says Aegon. "They say Varys used children to spy in them, but I'm none too keen on the idea of children even just mapping the tunnels. Dear old Maegor came by his reputation honestly, and the gods alone know what booby-traps have been fitted in this place since he died."

Sansa sighs. "So that's why you're doing all these complicated things with yardsticks and lanterns and mirrors."

"... possibly," says Jon evasively, shoulders hunching in remembered amusement. He, Aegon and Sarella had spent most of yesterday running around the training yard with yardsticks and shouting about the thickness of the walls and the width of the armoury, to Sansa and Dany's hilarity and the exasperation of the long-suffering Aurane.

"There was only one mirror," says Aegon. "It didn't work as well as we'd hoped."

"He means they dropped it," Sansa confides in Daemon, who appears to have dozed off. She slips her nipple out of his mouth as Jon snorts back laughter and hands Day to his father to lace up her gown again.

Aegon settles the baby gently in the crook of his arm and proceeds to look utterly besotted.

"I wonder," says Sansa thoughtfully, getting to her feet with a swish of skirts – she loves that little noise, the smooth brush of the silk against her legs – "I wonder if his Highness the Prince of Dragonstone, Lord Commander of the Golden Company, a Captain of the Dragon Host, Councillor to her Grace Queen Daenerys –"

"You know she's about to make a truly scathing point when she starts listing all your titles," says Jon. "The one and only time she's ever called me _Prince Aemon _I was getting a tongue-lashing for coming off my horse at the Battle of the Trident."

"Brawling with that Spicer fellow like a common foot soldier," says Aegon, solemn with disapproval.

"I wonder, I say," says Sansa smoothly, refusing to be interrupted, or side-tracked, "if said Highness and his esteemed brother have ever given a thought to waiting a short while with their great project and then asking the Lady Arya Stark for help with it when she arrives?"

There follows a slightly abashed silence. Jon and Aegon exchange a look. Arya is sleekly slender, and not very tall, and they're all sure she is far more acrobatic than she has ever shown herself to be in their presence, and her ship is due the day after tomorrow and she would jump at a chance to explore the Red Keep's hidden corridors.

Not to mention the fact that anything fool enough to threaten Arya while she's down there will get what's coming to it several times over, which is more than can be said for the slightly more tender-hearted men of this family.

If Sansa were feeling uncharitable, she might call them thoroughly impractical instead of tender-hearted, but she isn't, so she doesn't.

"I suppose," says Aegon.

"She'd like the," says Jon.

"That's true, isn't it?"

Dear gods, they don't even need to finish sentences anymore.

"So if we leave the north section –"

"Right, and then she can get into it from the –"

"Don't forget that –"

Sansa shakes her head at them. Aegon has found a roll of parchment on a chest and handed Day off to Jon while he sketches; the Dragon in Winter tucks his baby nephew into his blankets with a practiced motion and a thoughtful look. Ghost slips into the nursery when Sansa opens the door and goes to curl around the foot of Day's crib.

She shuts the door on their conversation gently and goes to help Dany rule the Realm, smiling to herself.


	7. catelyn, 13 aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_._ (Title of this collection from McMaster Bujold_.)

**catelyn – (13 aRW)**

The day the rider arrived was a blustery, grey, wintry sort of day. Cat had already finished her morning lessons, planned a strategy for the siege of the godswood on the next snowy day, cleaned up her room and practiced her needlework with Aunt Arya and Beth Cassel; now she was loitering at the edges of the practice yard and hoping Father wouldn't come find her and drag her off to do accounts with him. Father hated doing accounts and so did Cat; neither of them had the slightest head for figures, but Mother said that misery shared was misery halved and threatened to lock them in the study together until the things were finished.

Fortunately there was no chance of that last happening today. Jon had the summer flu and was being quite extravagantly miserable, so Mother and Maester Sam had conferred briefly and then ordered a quarantine for Mother and Anya, just in case. Yesterday Father had taken them all below the window of the Queenskeep and they had said their goodnights with Mother perched on the windowsill and Ned trying to climb the walls.

(Aunt Arya had recovered from her fit of the giggles just long enough to put a stop to that. She'd said the Queenskeep was where Uncle Bran had lost his legs and learned to fly and that Ned wasn't old enough for that sort of thing – not while summer lasted.)

Anyway, this was the day the rider came, limping slightly with weariness and cold as he came into the yard behind Beth. He was watching her out of the corner of his eye; of course lots of people were surprised that the personal garrison of the King in the North was commanded by a woman. He was about Uncle Bran's age she thought, and had a pleasant, curious face.

"... take you to his Grace," Beth was saying.

"Thank you very much, m'lady – ma'am – "

"Captain," said Beth, looking amused.

The stranger made a slight bow. "Captain. Thank you."

Cat jumped up. "I can take him to Father," she offered cheerfully, Kitten running at her heels.

"Hmmph," said Beth. "Don't you have lessons?"

"Not anymore," said Cat smugly. "Welcome to Winterfell," she added, turning smoothly to the stranger. "I am Catelyn Stark; is it a message you carry for my father? I could take it to him while you rest and eat."

The man was looking at her with an odd little smile. "No," he said. "Thank you, milady, but I should see his Grace in person. In fact it was – it is Queen Jeyne I've come to see."

Cat frowned. "Then I must apologise – my brother has the summer flu and my lady mother thought it best that she stay alone in the Queenskeep for a short while with my baby sister."

"The Captain made mention of that," the stranger says. "Forgive me, I have not yet introduced myself – my name is Rollam Westerling."

Beth was pursing her lips in that way that meant she didn't approve of something, but was willing to be convinced.

_We don't speak of your other grandparents, Kitten dearest, because my mother – my mother is wicked, and self-serving, and would have had me wed a Lannister when she thought your father dead_.

Cat drew herself up.

_But yes, I miss my siblings. Elenya helped me get away, so I could start north and give birth to you in safety._

"Then you are doubly welcome here, Uncle," she said.

Rollam smiled; she thought he looked relieved. He nodded down at Kitten. "I remember Grey Wind," he said. "Jeyne was always afraid of him, but I liked him."

"Mother's _never_ been afraid of Grey Wind," said Cat, shocked.

"Perhaps it took her time to adjust," Rollam offered.

Cat pursed her lips, but then nodded. They crossed the yard together and went into the Great Keep. Inside, he loosened his cloak with a look of surprise and she explained about the hot springs and how they pumped through the walls like the lifeblood of a direwolf. Up the stairs and through the corridors, past maids and guards and Bran's pup Smoke, banished from the lesson-room. Kitten stopped to nose at him in passing.

Then: Father's study. Rollam hadn't spoken; was he nervous?

She knocked.

"Come," Father called. "You'd better be here for the accounts, Shadowcat."

Cat smiled. "Your Grace," she said, and Father looked up sharply. She was never so formal. "A visitor for my lady mother, Father. From the Crag."

Father stood up as Rollam stepped into the room. "Rollam?" he said, surprised.

"Your Grace," said Rollam, bowing. "I –"

"Oh, gods, boy, don't be an idiot," said Father and came around the heavy desk to grasp his hand, wrist to wrist. "Grown up a bit since last I saw you." He was smiling, roughly fond.

"Yes, sire," said Rollam, startled. "I mean. Robb."

Father grinned. "That's better. Have you eaten? Rested? I assume Shadowcat's told you about our quarantine. Anya's just three months. Jeyne wanted to err on the side of caution."

"Congratulations," said Rollam with a smile. "I should have said that first of course – six times over. I'm sorry that –"

He paused.

"That you never answered Jeyne's letters?" asked Father bluntly. "She wrote six times that first year we came home, and then gave up."

"I know it," said Rollam. "My dear mother had us watch while she burned the letters in the hearth without even opening them."

Father's turn to pause. Cat chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip; what a horrible grandmother she had. Still, not even Sybell Spicer could compete with Mad King Aerys. Poor Uncle Jon.

"I'm sorry," said Father at last.

Rollam shrugged. "Why bother?" he said, sounding tired. "Eventually Elenya and I learned to ignore it."

"I hear she wed a Marbrand," Father offered.

"Yes. After all my mother's talk about Lannisters and great Houses." Rollam looked amused, but it was the vicious kind of amusement that Uncle Rickon had had once when Cat had overheard him talking about the sack of the Twins with Gawen Glover. "Anyway." He sighed. "I would not have been able to persuade Father to let me come if she were not dead. A fever. I had an idea the knowledge might ease Jeyne's mind should she ever wish to visit the south."

Father glanced at Cat, as if he was worried what she thinks of the whole nasty business. She pulled a face at him, very slightly.

"Should I go and ask the kitchens to have a meal sent up for Uncle?" she asked. "And rooms made up. Will you stay for the wedding?"

Rollam blinked. "Wedding?"

"My brother Rickon to Anna Mormont," explained Father. "It's three months away."

Rollam shook his head. "I don't mean to impose upon your hospitality so long," he objected.

"Jeyne's not seen you in thirteen years," said Father. "It's grieved her, Rollam."

That swayed him. Cat ducked out of the study and meandered down to the kitchens. She'd call Jesper Grad the steward and have him give Uncle Rollam the apartments in the west wing on the second floor. A place for him at table that evening in the Great Hall and a maid to run to Mother and give her the news - oh, but she'd check on Jon first so Mother would know he was all right. What else would Mother do? Oh - get the twins to look presentable. That would take up several hours. Lynna would help, though.


	8. daenerys, 11 aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_.

_If R+L=J (which is the assumption of this verse), then this chapter contains incest.  
><em>

**daenerys – (11 aRW)**

Aemon has that look again – that cynical look of his, slightly mocking. Dany doesn't like it. Robb told her once that he used to brood when they were boys; now he looks wry and sardonic instead.

She can guess when that started. Reconciling himself to being Aegon's brother, Lyanna's son by Rhaegar Targaryen, was one thing. Reconciling himself to not being Eddard's son was quite another. Gaining parents is all well and good, but losing one, and the only one you ever knew at that –

Aegon had gotten sardonic himself when Dany had spoken to him of it and remarked that at least Griff had done him the favour of disowning him officially – publicly too, and in person. When Dany thinks of the way his mouth had twisted she remembers red doors and a day in the Dothraki sea: the day she had first known she would have to take herself home, that there was no one else to do it.

And now here she is. Not long past dawn, the shadow of the castle darkens on Dragonstone's gardens; the dew lies heavy on the grass and the leaves rustle in the morning breeze. Dany passes between the trees silent as a shadow in black and red. She went to put her Dothraki leathers on this morning, had a sudden, firm conviction that her mother would have thoroughly disapproved of them, and put them away again – at least for today.

The small postern gate is heavy, but she is not Drogo's child-khaleesi anymore and it opens for her with only the briefest murmur of protest. Jon's footprints are clear in the wet grass, though Dany cannot tell if Ghost went with him. She follows him across the meadows down to the sea-path and the sand dunes. The salt tang of the sea she'll treasure the taste of for the rest of her life wraps itself around her, borne inland by the wind. It had never been so precious to her before her first sight of Dragonstone hovering over the waves in the evening sunlight, painted with its blood-red glow; between one glance over the prow of the ship and the next, she had finally come home, and the sea had become an irrevocable part of her.

She finds her dragon-prince sprawled on his back in the sand dunes, dark eyes half-shut, arms behind his head.

"I didn't mean to wake you, love," he says. He always knows when she's near him.

Dany sinks down beside him, not touching. The sand is cold, and slightly damp. "You didn't. I wanted to come out here early and watch the sunlight on the sea."

He shifts. "Here it is, then."

"Don't be cynical. It suits you about as well as patience would suit Rickon."

He laughs. "Forgive me, your Grace."

"My Grace will consider your petition."

Sigh. They stay silent for a short while, watching sea and sky respectively, and Dany is sure now that this is the best way to get a confidence out of Aemon: by waiting and by not looking at him when he speaks it.

"I can't feel it," he says at last.

"Feel what?"

"Home. I feel – I feel closer to them at King's Landing. And yet he was born here, lived here, and she loved him, so I... ah. I don't know."

Dany pauses. "I should perhaps make a joke about true Targaryens," she says.

Jon snorts.

"You and Aegon have other homes. This will be Daemon's, and his siblings'. That's enough. That is more than I have ever hoped for."

"It –" Aemon says, but can't finish the thought. Half dragon, half direwolf; they call him the Prince of Summerhall and yet he lives with an ear to the North Wind and the tales it tells him; he is not entirely himself down here... but he is not entirely different either.

It's just _complicated_.

Dany sees, quite suddenly, very clearly.

"Prince Aemon is not the man I fell in love with," she says. "Jon Snow is. And if your lady mother had thought of you as Rhaegar's child she would have let Lady Ashara take you east with Aegon, not begged Lord Eddard to raise you as a Stark of Winterfell."

He draws a sharp breath, but stays silent.

"Aemon need not be a different man to Jon," she says. "In fact I would prefer him not to be. Nor is he... somehow the truth, while Jon Snow is a lie. You are who you are. If you don't trust yourself in this, trust me. And trust Lyanna."

Jon lays a hand on her back below her shoulder blades, warm but light, as if afraid to touch her.

"_Fire and Blood_," he says. "That's how I think of you – as though your very blood were wildfire."

Dany smiles. "I think of you the way I first saw you. In the woods just south of Eastwatch with a battle in the snow all about you and a hunter's moon shining on your sword-blade."

"Hopelessly, incorrigibly romantic," he says. She stretches her legs out and lies down beside him and he takes her in his arms, beard-stubble grazing her forehead. The heat of him warms her and his heart beats steady under her hand.

"Stay with me as long as you can stand to," she says. "Go home if and when you need to. I want your love, not your devotion. I've come to believe those are two very different things."

He smiles. "I think you may be right."

It's hardly the most comfortable place to make love in – nor the warmest, or the most private. But Dany loves her wolf-lord most when he smiles like that, and he has a way of watching her as if she's a Queen whose likeness he's come far to see; not devotedly, but with awe and admiration.

They walk back to Dragonstone together hand in hand. Dany carries her boots. Jon's tunic hangs unlaced.

"We could still be wed," he says. "If you wanted. Pyp's gone and done it, and he's not the only one, so they can't really object about my oaths."

Dany purses her lips. "It might give people ideas. After all, Aegon has a better claim than I to the Iron Throne."

"It's hard to argue with three fire-breathing dragons," Jon points out wryly. "Besides, the throne will come to Daemon eventually."

Married or not, they will never have a child together.

"Still, I think it safer not to. I love Quentyn, but I've yet to meet his sister and she is Doran's heir. Trystane is wed to Cersei's daughter and Mace Tyrell bounces back and forth between allegiances so often you could play at catch with him for a ball."

"Hmm."

She looks up sharply. _They_ might not object about his oaths, whoever _they_ are, but he is not so cavalier about his honour. "Unless you –"

He laughs. "Once," he admits. "Perhaps even now, a little. But one day the Wall will stand again, and then... well."

"I do nothing but tear you in two," says Dany ruefully. "Winterfell or Dragonstone, a wedding or your vows..."

"Ah," says Jon, "but you don't ever demand of me that I fix the cracks."

They kiss beneath the oak tree inside the gate, Dany's back pressed against the rough bark, her hands in Jon's hair.

"Shave for me?" she says when they draw apart.

"After breakfast," he promises.


	9. jon, 40 months aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_.

**jon – 40 months aRW**

"What is he like?" asks Sam, sounding curious. Jon tilts his head back and looks up at the sky, deep glowing blue for once, and wrinkles his cold, numb nose at it. It was snowing lightly when they arrived, sky Stark-grey and threatening worse blizzards, and snowing too when later on Sam came into the winter gardens and said, _the Queen will live, your Grace. The child is a girl; she is weak still but otherwise healthy_.

"Who?" he asks.

Sam sighs, faintly exasperated. More and more often he forgets to be a craven since coming back north. "You know. Aegon. Your brother."

"Aegon," says Jon, testing the name in his mouth the way he still sometimes does. _Aegon is my brother. Robb Bran Rickon Aegon_. He rubs at his nose with the heel of his right hand and scratches at his beard and says, "Aegon is... pragmatic."

Sam pauses. "Pragmatic?" he says doubtfully.

"Pragmatic," Jon agrees.

"You're not, you know. At least, you weren't when I left."

"I got better," says Jon, grinning. "Aegon's helped, actually."

"Has he?"

"Yes."

_Aegon is pragmatic. Aegon is sharp-edged and sharp-tongued and upon occasion childishly flamboyant. Aegon is fierce and clever and the most ruthless killer I've ever seen; not the best mark you, not yet, but the most ruthless. If you have the grave misfortune to be in his way, you die. Aegon is warm-hearted and open-minded and he gives himself to people, whole and entire, and all he asks for in return is that they not turn away from him. Griff did. Ashara did. I won't. Nor will Daenerys. I've never yet laid eyes on her yet I know this in my bones. _

Sam shifts his back against the heart tree and says, still slightly doubtful, "I suppose that's a help," and scratches Ghost's ears. "Maester Aemon said your royal father thought he was the prince that was promised," he adds softly, but Jon is looking up at the sky and not really listening; not yet.

"Aegon," he says, "is my brother. Like Robb and Bran and Rickon and you and Pyp and Grenn."

There's a cold wind blowing, piping through the broken stones of Winterfell, and his lady mother sits in darkness somewhere below his feet with a crown of winter roses in her lap, enthroned among the Kings of Winter. The heart tree leaves rustle above his head, starkly red against the blue arch of sky. Ghost-eyes red; Targaryen red.

_Three heads has the dragon._

"We should go back inside," Sam says. "The King might miss us."

"The King is busy with his daughter," says Jon and stamps his feet on the frosty ground, smiling to himself. It is, he thinks, a beautiful day.


	10. arya, 61 months aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_.

**arya – 61 months aRW**

There was a battle on – not a very big one, more a sort of running skirmish. Arya settled by a tree to watch, interested. Nymeria was less impressed with her sister's inactivity, but Robb was camped at Last Hearth with a small garrison, a foul temper, and the unshakeable opinion that Stannis was Watch-business and he wasn't about to interfere unless the man made any sign of turning south with the remnants of his forces, so would Arya please refrain from getting Overly Involved.

She'd rather wanted to ask what his definition of _overly involved_ was when he was already sending her and Sansa to Eastwatch to take Shireen and Edric hostage, but Sansa had given her A Look. Sansa's Looks were famous these days. Arya supposed holding the Baratheons at Winterfell was leverage of some sort with the Dragon Queen; or maybe it was just Robb and Sansa Making Statements. They did that; it was a political thing.

Arya was trying not to think about politics unless she had to, these past weeks. She'd fought a Faceless Man at Moat Cailin who'd come for Robb, and the encounter had shaken her more than she had at first thought. It had been good to travel north with Rickon and spend time with Jon and Aegon.

An arrow thunked into the tree trunk beside her and a man gave a shout and broke off from a brawl at the fringe of battle to run at her, sword blade filthy-red. Nymeria leaped up and shook the snow off her fur and the man blanched – Arya could tell, even in the moonlight – and veered off again, away from her.

He'd be dead soon anyway. Stannis was losing. Arya considered it downright folly to rely on the loyalties of men who'd spent five hundred years being the minions of the family he, Stannis, was currently fighting against, but Stannis had high hopes and not much imagination. Whoever was advising the Velaryon boy had rather more; their forces had quietly sworn themselves to Aegon days before Queen Daenerys' ships had been sighted. The rout of the last Baratheon King had begun very soon after. The Imp had been gloating ever since.

Off to her right Aegon appeared out of the darkness – that black of his was rather useful – killed three men in quick succession and caught her eye, grinning sharply. Arya grinned back. _Valar morghulis_, he mouthed to her before he slipped back into the battle again. Further away she could see Jon on his horse, Longclaw in his hand, shouting orders at someone to the north. She craned her head around the back of the tree and saw shapes in the trees, men running north and west.

Baratheon loyalists, she supposed. Stannis was nowhere to be seen; had he already gotten out that way?

There was an itch between her shoulder-blades and an iron tang in her mouth. Nymeria wanted to hunt, and Arya was hugely tempted. Stags ran from wolves, it was the nature of things, but Robb had told her not to get Overly Involved. She drew a deep breath of snow-air and rammed her left fist against the tree trunk, scraping her knuckles.

Pain helped her concentrate when her pack was not there to ground her, she'd found.

She was Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the North. She had more control than this.

(Jojen was forever objecting to the way she kept her identity tied to a wolf, but as far as Arya was concerned Jojen had a lot of theories and very little practice when it came to clinging on his identity by his fingernails and not being swamped by a string of bad choices and three years of lies, and anyway her pack had been returned to her at last, and what more of an identity did a direwolf need?)

The hunt-urge died at last, the way it generally did. Nymeria whined in the back of her throat, and Arya bent to put her hand on the direwolf's head.

_Soon, sister_, she thought. _Soon_.

Even Robb knew the taste of a hunt in his mouth. Stannis Baratheon might run where he would; sooner or later, there would be a wolf pack on his trail.

The battle was dying down. Ghost slunk through the snow towards them, tilted his muzzle, flicked his tail. Nymeria sat up as an enemy came close. Confronted with two direwolves, he ran just as the last one had. The Night's Watch were moving into a more ordered line again now the Baratheon men were trickling away west; distantly there was the noise of a hue and cry in the woods to the east, and moonlight on metal.

Arya stood up, frowning. Had Robb come after all?

No. At the far side of the clearing, Aegon flung his sword up and shouted as he caught it, some guttural language Arya didn't know – but clearly a shout of triumph for all that. Someone answered him; someone else blew a horn; Jon urged his horse around and killed some fool who seemed about to run at Aegon, and two horsemen came into the clearing. One of them was Barristan Selmy.

Behind them, on a silver horse that seemed to shine rather melodramatically in the moonlight, and wrapped in furs as black as those of any man of the Night's Watch, rode the Dragon Queen.

Arya folded her arms over her chest. Hmm. Daenerys would be tall standing up, and probably slender. She'd flung her hood back but Arya couldn't see her face very well from this distance. Nymeria thought she and Aegon looked like pack-mates, the way Sansa and their brothers did, or Arya and Jon.

Jon wheeled his horse to face her. He was still holding Longclaw, streaked with blood, in his gloved fist, the silly fool. Arya sighed. She could just picture the stupid surprise on his face. Had he thought a woman they called _Mother of Dragons_ would wait quietly at Eastwatch for him to go and fetch her off her ships?

Somewhere at Last Hearth, Sansa was giving Jon A Look. Even Ghost was tilting his head in a way that Arya was sure meant _put the sword down when you're talking to your aunt, stupid_.

Queen Daenerys didn't seem to care about the sword. She nudged her horse forwards past Ser Barristan and the stranger, reached out to Jon with her right hand, snatched it back, clenched her fist, reached out to him again. Arya saw her lick her lips.

"Aemon," she said.

In a burst of emotion comparable to the time he'd broken Robb's nose at Castle Black on seeing him alive again Jon caught her hand in his left one and held it tight. "Your Grace," he said at last, hoarse with the cold.

Was that the best he could do? Arya personally burst into tears when she found Robb in the riverlands. So did he. And then he did it again when they found Jeyne. And at Greywater. And Castle Black when Bran had come walking towards them across Jon's rooms. Of course, that might have been the broken nose.

Anyway, the Queen was trying to get down off her horse and keep a hold of Jon's hand and embrace him and call to Aegon all at once, and Arya sighed and shook her head at them and went to greet Ser Barristan. Father had liked him, she remembered.


	11. rickon, 10 aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_._ (Title of this collection from McMaster Bujold_.)

**rickon - 10 aRW**

Robb finds him perched on the steps before the Great Sept of Baelor. Dawn is creeping over the houses of King's Landing; the Street of Sisters lies in darkness still, but at the Dragonpit there is movement and noise already.

At noon the Queen on the Iron Throne will throw open the great bronze doors for the first time in a century, and the dragons will enter in.

"Little brother," says Robb, stopping at his feet.

Rickon rubs at his unshaven face, runs a hand through hair too-long. Shaggydog lies curled around him, stretch of warmth at his back.

"I don't remember him," he says. "Not truly."

Robb starts to speak, thinks better of it.

"I've tried," says Rickon. "I've tried and tried and I keep – in my mind, he looks like Jon. And Mother – Mother is Sansa, but..."

"No," says Robb. "She didn't. Sansa's looks are... sharper. I think she and Arya must both look like Aunt Lyanna, in some way. Mother was beautiful, but it was a warm kind of beauty."

Rickon twists his hands together, afraid as he has never been before a battle.

"Father?" he asks.

Robb laughs. "Did look like Jon," he says. "Well, older of course. And bulkier, I think."

"Like you?"

"No, not quite. I've got the Tully build, according to Uncle Brynden. No, Father was just. Heavier than Jon."

Rickon nods. "Well," he says. "At least we're relatively certain you'll not be the third Lord of Winterfell in a row to die down here."

Robb comes to sit by him then, laying Oathkeeper across his knees.

"Why did he do it? Grandfather, I mean. Why come here? He could have called the banners and begun a rebellion the moment Aerys' summons reached him. All sorts of things might have been different."

"I doubt it. Aerys would still have killed Uncle Brandon. Coming down here, there was a chance... the very faintest, smallest of chances. But still a chance."

"_Family, Duty, Honor_," says Rickon, disgusted. "Torrhen knelt, and we went _tame_."

Robb's fingers clench around Oathkeeper's hilt. "It's not a bad thing," he says, voice very steady. "To have honor. To keep your word. To tell the truth and show mercy, and to hold others to the same standard. It's not," here he pauses, swallows. "It's not wrong, is what I'm trying to say."

Rickon sighs. "No," he agrees. "No, I didn't mean that – I just – ah. Gods be good."

"It's complicated."

"Yes. Complicated. Far more complicated than anyone ever admits."

Robb wraps an arm around his shoulders and draws him close. Rickon shifts to fit himself against his brother's side like the scrawny boy who came to Greywater Watch in that autumn rainfall so long ago.

"And when Dany is crowned –"

"When Dany is crowned," says Robb softly, "we'll go home. We'll go home in Father's place, and in Uncle Brandon's and Grandfather's and Aunt Lya's. And later, when Jon and Sansa come and bring Sansa's pups home with them, we'll teach the little ones to shift their skin and open their eyes, and we'll lie in the Great Keep at night as they open the castle gates to let us out, and the wolves of Winterfell will roam the wolfswood under a hunter's moon."

Rickon shivers at the words: the promise of it, the taste of blood in his mouth and the wind in his fur. There have been weeks and months and years when the promise of running the wolfswood with his pack once more was all that kept him sane.

But the wolfswood is far away, and there's no snow-smell in the wind that comes in off the sea, and direwolves don't belong in dragon-country.

He sighs. "It's never so simple," he says. "Winter is coming."

Robb laughs. "It already came. We beat it back. We always do."

Rickon laughs in answer, startled. "I'd not thought of it that way."

"It takes practice." Robb scratches at the scar along his jaw, eyes and voice very far away.

The sunlight has crept into the Street of Sisters as they talked. Behind him Shaggydog yawns hugely; Rickon leans back to the warmth of the wolf's body and closes his eyes. The sea wind touches his face and Robb's chest moves against his arm with his breaths, a rhythm as familiar to Rickon as his own heartbeat. The great doors of the sept groan as they open to greet the new day; did Father hear them, standing here before he died, did Sansa, alone at Joffrey's court and wed to a Lannister, did Arya, before she ran and ran and kept on running from King's Landing to the Crossing and over the sea to Braavos?

"Best go back," says Robb's deep voice, and the blackness shatters and darts away at the sound of it. "Sansa and Jon will miss us by now."

_It's a short one_, Sansa said, holding out the raven's letter to him. _You read it to me_.

And the parchment smooth under his fingers, and the sound of the words coming easily now: _It says "Robb lives"..._

Rickon smiles. "I'll race you," he offers, jumping up and promptly suiting action to words. Robb pelts after him with an indignant shout, dignity forgotten, and perhaps that's not the only thing they leave behind.


	12. aegon, 31 months aRW

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** more of the watch!verse. Whereas the first lot of stories were in chronological order, these ones probably won't be. So for the dates in the chapter titles (aRW = after the Red Wedding) I refer the interested Reader to the last chapter of _my watch began_, which is a timeline for this AU_._ (Title of this collection from McMaster Bujold_.)

**aegon – 31 months aRW**

King Robb comes to join him in the stables on the third day. Aegon is lounging against the wall feeling lost and irritable because horse-smell is at least familiar, and because everyone keeps looking at him as if he's about to throw a fit, go from perfectly sane to as irretrievably mad as his grandsire in the space of a second or less, and promptly start slaughtering every man woman or child he can get close enough to to hit with a sword.

It's annoying.

"What are you doing out here?" asks the King.

"Freezing my balls off," says Aegon. "How do you bear it?"

His Grace laughs. "As best we can."

"That's not a very encouraging answer."

The King grins again, touches his broken nose with a grimace, climbs up to sit on a barrel of... something... at Aegon's side. "Perhaps it wasn't meant to be."

"You mean, if I find it bleak and horrific enough up here, maybe I'll just pack up and leave and we can all pretend I didn't come here flourishing letters meant to prove your brother is not in fact _your_ brother, but mine?"

Aegon hasn't had much experience with Kings, especially not ones his own age. He suspects that's just become painfully obvious.

The fact of the matter is: it simply does not help that King Robb does not act like a King. He doesn't even act like Dany, who spent most of Aegon's time in Meereen being alternately suspicious, tearful or affectionate, but never quite lost a certain sharp, regal air while she did so. Robb shouts at his siblings and carries his daughter around with him almost everywhere he goes and argues military tactics with Aemon at the breakfast table. He is the most defiantly _alive_ person Aegon has ever laid eyes on, and judging by some of the things he's heard about Robb, it's entirely deliberate, and Aegon just cannot judge a man who does that.

"Something like that," Robb says now. "Why came you here, Aegon Targaryen? What gain did you think to have from it? Jon won't leave the Wall or his command to throw his support behind your Queen, and no man in Westeros would respect him if he did. Your grandfather murdered mine; my lords will not follow you."

"I don't ask for followers," says Aegon uncomfortably. "I don't ask for a thing, and never have since I've come here, except that Aemon listen to me."

"Your Queen will," says his Grace. "And his name is Jon."

"Perhaps," says Aegon. "But my brother's name is not."

Robb says nothing.

Aegon sighs. "A year ago, my mother died," he says. "A fever, as I told you. On her deathbed, she told me she loved me, and that she was sorry. I thought she meant for dying, or – perhaps for my life, I don't know. I knew she was a noble lady in Westeros. I'd always had an idea she did not want me to join the Golden Company, to be a sellsword. Anyway, I went to Father next day, to ask what she meant. He told me: for lying to you. About what, said I, like a damn fool boy with less sense than –" he waves a gloved hand, searching for a suitable comparison "- stubble."

Robb snorts.

"And Father said, about your parentage. You are not my son, Aegon. Nor were you ever Ashara's. You are not named for Rhaegar's child. You are that child. You are not my son."

Silence. Aegon is watching the horses now and talking as if he'll never stop – things he has not said to Dany and never said to Quentyn and would not say to Aurane if he knew where his friend was and might not even say to Aemon, who is his brother, but he can say them here, to the stable walls and the wolf-khal of Winterfell with his eyes like ice: ice, and death.

"I laughed at him. I laughed in his face and told him he had drank too much, that Mother's death had snapped his mind and lost him his reason. I told him the Targaryens were dead and good riddance, that dragons had no place in my world, that he had raised me to put my family and my friends first, to be loyal to them, to be more cunning and ruthless in their defence than I ever was in the employ of any man who contracted the Company, and that if he thought this bedtime story would drive me away, or whatever it was he was trying to do, he was sadly mistaken.

And the next day he called a council, my father did, summoned all the Captains of the Golden Company and stood up before them and laid Blackfyre on the table at his side and pointed at me and said: that boy is not my son."

"Gods be good," says Robb involuntarily.

Aegon laughs and knows it's bitter. "They weren't," he says. "It took an hour for the shouting to die down. That boy is your King, my father kept bellowing, Rhaegar Targaryen's trueborn heir by Elia Martell... and so Aegon Connington died, and Young Griff turned out to have been a shadow and a spook all along."

"Then you went to Meereen."

"First Griff held a speech about usurpers and hidden passageways in the Tower of the Hand that he so briefly held for his own. He talked about Rhaegar until the sun went down, and about prophecies and dragons and all sorts of nonsense. He said the Iron Throne was mine, and Dany born to be my Queen. And then he said: but three heads has the dragon, and Rhaegar had another son."

"Jon."

"My brother Aemon," says Aegon again. "I want no throne, Stark. I want no honours and no armies. I told Dany so, and she merely shrugged and said good, because she did. I think Griff was apoplectic over that, but he swore to her anyway. I want... well, nothing. I thought to –"

"You thought to find here what you've lost," says Robb.

"I suppose. Yes. You, I think, understand that."

"I understand losing, yes. And I understand standing up again afterwards and stabbing the bastards in the back." He smiles, a sharp-edged smile that makes some half-sleeping sellsword's instinct in Aegon wake with a start and remember to be wary. But then it falls away, and he's a boy now, tired and cold with a broken nose and a shadow of grief on his face. "I wish I didn't. More, I wish I didn't have to. I doubt my lord father meant for me to become the kind of man I fear I'm turning into."

"Will that man protect your siblings?" asks Aegon. "Will he save your wife? Will he see your daughter safe to adulthood, and a wedding that doesn't earn a colourful epithet?"

Robb looks at him. "Yes," he says.

"Then regret him all you like," says Aegon, "but don't change him."

They shiver together in silence for a short time before Robb asks, "Will you tell Jon any of this?"

Aegon shrugs. "Perhaps," he says. "Will he ask?"

Robb shrugs. "Perhaps," he says. "Will you?"

Aegon smiles suddenly. "Yes," he says firmly.

"Then so will he. Come on, Targaryen; it's near midday and I doubt dragons live off straw any more than direwolves do."

"I have a hankering for lion myself," says Aegon.

Robb grins. "We'll have that too, you and I," he promises.


End file.
